Our 5 Favorite Budget Travel Planning Tools
- Christy, with input from Jordan
- May 12, 2017
- 5 min read
I saw a Facebook post about WOW Airlines. It was talking about the great deals that WOW offers, as if this were brand new information. Well, we have flown on WOW airlines in the past, and just assumed everyone knew about the wonderful deals that they offer to go to Iceland, and beyond. But, judging by the comments on this post, I was mistaken. This is where this post's inspiration comes in. If this was news to so many people, I'm must taking it for granted that people know how to find these great deals. It seems to flow naturally now, however, thinking back, we have really put a lot of effort into finding our travel planning tools. I could never cover all of them and one blog post, so what I'm going to focus on is the question that people ask us the most often. "How in the world do you guys manage to travel so often?"
It has become apparent, and our Social Circle, that many people believe that Jordan and I just have a river of money flowing. My co-workers think that Jordan makes big bucks, and his co-workers think that I make the big bucks. The truth is, we're just average. However, we have chosen to spend almost every dime on travel. I will get to our somewhat minimalist lifestyle and Budget Travel on a later post.
Now, as some of our followers know, I own my own business and I can operate 99% of it from anywhere on the planet. Jordan also has a very flexible boss and several vacation days. I can't help you there... I really wish I could, trust me. But, what I can do is share with you the travel tools that we use to find the best deals. The statement I always make is this: We travel where it's cheap, when it's cheap. Meaning, we travel off-peak season to random destinations. We never say, "Gee, I'd really like to go there on this date," then buy tickets and book hotels. We see when and where the deals are, and try our best to make them work into our schedules. We never really know where we're going to go! Exciting, yes?
Our Top 5 Favorite Ways to "Shop" for Travel Deals
1. One of our favorite tools is Skyscanner. A great little website that lets you look for Budget Airline tickets. We love sky scanner because we can look for trips to "anywhere." It's great for us, because we often don't have a specific place in mind, and typically don't care where we fly out of; we just want to get to the coolest place for the least amount of money. Sometimes we can find flights to Europe, South America and more for the prices most people find to fly domestically.
2. We are also addicted to little budget Airlines. Our personal favorite is WOW Airlines. It is fantastic for international
travel. If you're willing to drive a little bit to get to the right Airport, for less than $200, it will get you to Europe. Then it's up to you from there. Once in Europe, we have found many flights as cheap as 20 bucks a person. Spirit Airlines is very inexpensive as well. We use it mainly for domestic travel. WOW Airlines feels like you're getting a great deal. To me, the only real holdup is the fact that you can only pack 9 kilograms into a backpack, otherwise they charge you pretty excessive baggage fees. No free food, but you can always bring your own snacks, or buy theirs, so no biggie. And, surprisingly for airline food, there's is pretty good. Spirit, on the other hand, feels like what it is. A cheap little Airline that promises nothing more than to save you a few bucks while getting you from point A to B. We don't care how we get there, we just want to go to cool places. However, if you are flying with hopes of comfort and great service, this is not the airline for you. The seats are tight and tiny, and they offer absolutely nothing complimentary. The customer service is less than impressive. But, as my aunt once told me, I could fly in airplane bathroom for 6 hours, if I had to, if it meant I was able to go to some of these places. Spirit isn't as bad as flying in a bathroom, and it's a cheap, cheap, cheap way to get there, so overall, worth it.
3. We also love cruising. We really like to use the websites cruise.com and cruises.com. They offer some really great deals, especially last minute deals. Again, this is another place where you cannot be that picky on your dates or your destinations. As long as you can be flexible, there are some amazing deals to be found here. You can find anything from a little weekend cruise to the Bahamas, too extensive multi-day European cruises.
4. We used to use hotels.com pretty often. However, we have found, that their customer service is the absolute worst. They have screwed us over on multiple occasions, giving away our rooms, not rewarding us the free nights we have earned; More than once, the room that we booked was not available. When you book very low-cost rooms, hotel staff typically aren't in a big hurry to upgrade you when these mistakes happen; translating into a crappier room. Not to mention, we always end up in one of the worst rooms in the hotel anyway. We always felt a little ethically grey on this, but after the last total screw over, that cost us our free night and the price we pre-paid online for the hotel, with not even a sorry from the customer service rep, we decided that this method is totally acceptable: We have started using the hotels.com website as a search engine. We look for the hotels and dates that we want, and look for the best rates. Then, we call the hotel and tell them the rate that we found on hotels.com. Almost every single time, they will meet the rate, or come very, very close. This saves you the hassle of messing around with a sub-par company. The only downside of this, is you have to actually talk to a human, and not a computer. Well, and I guess you have the potential loss of a free night now and then, but since we've missed out on a few we had rightly earned anyway, we think it is worth it.
5. I am also absolutely in love with TripAdvisor. I'm sure I'm going to mention this website over and over in future blog post. Might as well start now! We like to use the forums and look for activities that we would enjoy, trustworthy companies, the best rates, and good food, as well as the advice of others. Oftentimes, you can find very very good suggestions that you may not have even known about otherwise. If I have a question, I'll just post on the related forums. Occasionally, the answer is, "this is a common question, just do a search." And other times I'll get great answers, right there, to my question. I also love the reviews. We never have to go in blind again. I am a sucker for reviews! Hope these tools help you travel on a budget without making too many compromises. Give 'em a try and let us know your favorites too!
Comments